This Quantum World

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, "But how can it possibly be like that?" because you will go down the drain into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that. - Richard Feynman

Now if that's not smart, then it's hard to say what's smart.

And yet, for all his work in quantum physics, he was quite blunt in his assessment of this strangest of all the sciences: no one knows how it can be like that.

Quantum physics was developed in the early part of the 20th century, and its development turned the scientific world on its head. It demonstrated that matter as we know it is very different than how it was believed to be - matter is solid but also a wave, an energy form. This is what matter is - it is a quantum system, comprised of particles and waves.

Quantum systems by their nature are infinite and eternal, and do something that is not such an easy concept to grasp: they spread out across the universe everywhere at once.

In a quantum system, matter is particles and waves at the same time. These particle-waves begin life, according to quantum theory, in a large primal soup known as the quantum vacuum that is infinite in size and structure. This soup pervades the entire universe and is teeming with boundless amounts of information and energy.

Our normal laws of space and time tell us that something can only be in one place at one time, yet because particle-waves operate outside standard space-time principles, when they spread out from the quantum vacuum they are not in one place at one time but in every place at every time.

What this means is that in the quantum world, we are not just here, but also there, and there and there. You may be sitting in a chair while reading this, while at the same time lying on a beach in Hawaii, and at the same time driving in a car.

This may sound like science fiction, or it may just boggle your mind and give you a giant headache trying to ponder it. Yet this is the nature of the universe, as explained by quantum theory. And nobody knows how it can be like that. But it is.

Of course, we are only in one place at one time, and to act like we are not is to risk being labeled schizophrenic or psychotic. We are bound by laws of the relative world, which tell us we cannot be sipping martinis on a beach in Tahiti while at the same time freezing our butts off in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Why we would want to freeze our butts off in Ypsilanti, Michigan when we could be sipping martinis in Tahiti is hard to fathom, but needless to say we can only do one thing or another, but not both.

Yet on the other hand, we must remember that we are quantum systems, and as such, we are not that much different than the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, who could leave his smile behind while the rest of his body disappeared. As for those of us who are not Cheshire Cats, you will always be just in one place, although some part of you—the invisible part—may be somewhere else. That somewhere else is the trail left behind by our quantum nature.

To understand quantum physics, which in essence is to say to understand life, you have to free your mind, because there is no way you can wrap your mind around these concepts, unless you stretch your mind beyond its limitations.

Once you can wrap your mind around what quantum physics says about the true nature of life, then you can start to understand the connection between quantum physics and freeing your mind.

This takes us to the realm of the quantum thinker.